111 Aesthetic Quotes to Find Beauty In Unexpected Places

Aesthetic considerations are those that are concerned with beauty, or the appreciation of it. When we refer to aesthetic beauty or aesthetic pleasure, we may often think of something that appeals to the eye. But in truth, the term is also used in music, literature, gastronomy and beyond. Ultimately, it can describe anything able to awaken our deepest admiration.

Below are 111 aesthetic quotes that will help you find beauty in the most unexpected places, broken down into different sections. We’ll start with “deep” aesthetic quotes.

Deep aesthetic quotes

Many people associate art with aesthetic. However, art is not always about beauty and it’s also really subjective. The kind of art you like might be boring or even ugly to others.

So the term ‘aesthetic’ is not limited to art. You can find beauty in something that others don’t. It’s your own perception that makes someone or something beautiful in your eyes. But whatever your personal taste may be, we can all agree on the aesthetic of nature. Regardless of the seasons or landscapes we prefer, anyone can find beauty in the outdoors.

Here some of the best deep aesthetic quotes we’ve found for you. We’re sure they’re going to make you appreciate beauty even more.

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

– SOPHIA LOREN (more Sophia Loren quotes)

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.

– ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naiveté rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

– FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

– EDGAR ALLAN POE (more Edgar Allan Poe quotes)

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

–  HELEN KELLER (more Helen Keller quotes)

The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.

– AUDREY HEPBURN (more Audrey Hepburn quotes)

Beauty is strangely various. There is the beauty of light and joy and strength exulting; but there is also the beauty of shade, of sorrow and sadness, and of humility oppressed. 

– ARNOLD BENNETT

We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates. 

– JUN’ICHIRŌ TANIZAKI

I find beauty in the continual shaping of chaos which clearly embodies the primordial power of nature’s performance.

– IRIS VAN HERPEN

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

– ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

– ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent.

– CORNEL WEST

I think that’s what art is: art is communication made in the hope that interesting miscommunications will arise.

– MISHA GLOUBERMAN

Aesthetics is both politics and philosophy, a series of agreements and disagreements between subjective minds.

– JIMENEZ LAI

I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who “appreciate” beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There’s no such thing. I never “appreciate,” any more than I “like.” I love, or I hate.

– PABLO PICASSO

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

– ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object.

― WILLIAM HAZLITT

Short Aesthetic Quotes & Aesthetic Beauty

The key to effective communication is brevity, and below is a section of aesthetic quotes that are brief, but powerful.

Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror. 

– RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Beauty is the illumination of your soul.

– JOHN O’DONOHUE

Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.

– GEORGE W. RUSSELL

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

– MARGARET WOLFE HUNGERFORD

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

– CONFUCIUS

Beauty is sometimes born of pain.

– SHERI L. SWIFT

Rules of taste enforce structures of power.

– SUSAN SONTAG

Aestheticism is the garbage of intuitive feeling.

― KAZIMIR SEVERINOVICH MALEVICH

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

― OSCAR WILDE (more Oscar Wilde quotes)

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

– BARUCH DE SPINOZA

Desire for beauty will endure and undermine the desire for truth.

– RICHARD O. PRUM

Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.

– GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

– STEVE JOBS

Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgment are permanent.

– ROGER SCRUTON

All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation.

– SUSAN SONTAG

An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

— KAZUO ISHIGURO

Inspirational Aesthetic Quotes for your Aesthetic Enjoyment

Anything that is beautiful can inspire us, but beauty comes in all shapes and forms. There’s beauty in the darkness of a night, in the light of a day and in the madness of a person — as weird as it may sound. The following inspirational aesthetic quotes and sayings will remind you that beauty is more than meets the eye.

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.

  – ALBERT EINSTEIN

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

–  MURRAY GELL-MANN

It’s better to have a hunger and appreciation for beauty than to be merely beautiful. In the end, life is richer that way. She may learn that.

– SUSAN VREELAND

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.

– TONI MORRISON

The aesthetic can have its revenge upon ideology by revealing a power to complicate that is also a power to undermine.

― MURRAY KRIEGER

We all appreciated a certain aesthetic, and with that appreciation came a certain stylized presence.

– AMBER HEARD

Any great art wor… revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

– LEONARD BERNSTEIN

It’s odd that there is a high level of appreciation of nature. There is the aesthetic side that really loves nature and beauty.

– JERRY GARCIA

I think it’s more accurate to think of aesthetics as a key ingredient in a recipe, as opposed to the icing on the cake.

― STEPHEN P. ANDERSON

I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.

– CLIVE BELL

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

– EDMUND WHITE

Aesthetic and Religious Rapture, & Quotes About Life

No matter what you’re going through, even at a very young age, you can always find something beautiful and inspiring to distract you, even if just for a second. Art and beauty can be appreciated in strange and horrible ways, as well as beautiful ways, as long as you have a well-known aesthetic sense. 

In this regard, we’ve gathered a list of aesthetic quotes and phrases about life that can help you leave your aesthetic insecurities by the door, and indulge in your true artistic instincts. Use the following quotes and creative scenes as a healthy source of inspiration for your artistic instincts and aesthetic consumerism.

“Man needs music, literature, and painting – all those oases of perfection that make up art – to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.” – FERNANDO BOTERO

“Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented – which is what fear and anxiety do to a person – into something whole.” – LOUISE BOURGEOIS

When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

– AGNES MARTIN

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to be jaded or sarcastic or bitter in life, but I hang on to the reasons why life is beautiful.

– KELLI O’HARA

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

– ALICE WALKER

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.

– EARL NIGHTINGALE

Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth.

– MENACHEM BEGIN

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.

– OSHO

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

– VIVIAN GREENE

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

– RABINDRANATH TAGORE

In the life of the individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one.

– TOM ROBBINS

It’s hard to combine a simple life with a love of aesthetics.

– MARTY RUBIN

To so enter into it in nature and art that the enjoyed meanings of life may become a part of living is the attitude of aesthetic appreciation.

– GEORGE HERBERT MEAD

Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.

– PAUL RAND

The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life?

–  RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty.

– PIET MONDRIAN

If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you’re willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it’s mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that’s what matters.

– TRACY CHAPMAN

One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one’s life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury.

– ANISH KAPOOR

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.

– FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

It is just as important to set apart time for the development of our aesthetic faculties as for cultivating the money-getting instinct. A man cannot live by bread alone. His higher life demands an impalpable food.

– ORISON SWETT MARDEN

A Tagore surname signifies an association with aesthetics and all the best things of life. It’s enriching both personally and professionally.

– SHARMILA TAGORE

What comes from sorrow, watered by tears, grows something of beauty. A salt garden. And so this I leave behind. A harvest for those who find their way into my life and I into theirs.

― CINDY MCCORMICK MARTINUSEN

But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists —seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt. Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.

– SIMON VAN BOOY

But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists — seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt. Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.  

– SIMON VAN BOOY

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.  

– KAHLIL GIBRAN (more Kahlil Gibran quotes)

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.

– LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. 

– ASHLEY SMITH

There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.  

– MANDY HALE

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

– MARCUS AURELIUS (more Marcus Aurelius quotes)

There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.

– EDWARD ABBEY

When I started counting my blessings my whole life turned around.

– WILLIE NELSON

Whenever I count my blessings, I find myself becoming more grateful because the good things of life outweigh the not so pleasant things that are happening in my life.

– JAMES JASON